1183 
ESA/ESRIN Software Demonstration 
AVHRR Data Production and Access 
From Acquisition to Delivery 
O. Arino, J-M Melinotte, A. Buongiorno and G. Pittella 
ESA/ESRIN C.P. 64, via Galileo Galilei 00044 Frascati, Italy 
ABSTRACT: This paper describes the software presentation of the ongoing developments to improve the operational processing and access 
procedures of AVHRR data at ESA. Operational acquisition and processing stations installed in Europe, Africa and South-East Asia are 
participating to the ESRIN Coordinated Tiro* Network (ECTN). Different products derived from the ESA in house processing system are 
processed and packaged in a common data format A central archive of these products located in Frascati is accessible through Eurimage and 
the ESRIN user service. The archive visibility is achieved through on line and off line access to a catalogue and to the Quick Looks archive. 
The development of higher level products including atmospherically corrected products as well as more refined tools to visualize the 
available products are described here. Moreover ESA7ESRIN is managing a complete copy of the “Global Land 1 km AVHRR Data Set” 
which is an international project in collaboration with NOAA, NASA, USGS and CSIRO. This project and the ECTN operations give ESA 
the opportunity to learn about handling such an amount of data in an operational context. These lessons will serve to the development of the 
ground segment of the future ESA missions and in particular of the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) and the 
Advanced Along Track Radiometer (AATSR) instruments inboard ENVISAT (Pittella, 1994). 
1 Introduction 
It is recognized that efforts shall be put on the processing and distribution of satellite data to the user community. 
This note describes the activities in course at ESRIN in order to up-date the data products, to ease the Hat« access 
and to improve the data visibility to the user through different off-line and on-line mechanisms. In particular the 
AVHRR mission is taken as example here through a similar work has been done for Nimbus-7/CZCS and will be 
developed for the SeaWiFS mission. This software presentation is concentrated cm: 
* The generation of high level products based on improved cloud detection, atmospheric correction and Land 
Surface Temperature generation. 
• The data visibility with the Ionia “1 km” Net Browser dedicated to browse the “Global Land 1 km AVHRR 
Data Set” through network access. 
2 The Acquisition of data 
Several acquisition stations exist in Europe and outside Europe operated by national entities carrying out local 
observation programmes, (HRPT, 1991). With the purpose of coordinating the European activities for NOAA/ 
AVHRR and in order to provide the European users with uniform access to wide-coverage data through a 
common archive and a central catalogue. ESRIN has set-up a network of ground facilities called ECTN 
composed by a number of existing acquisition stations and a central facility at Frascati, (Fusco and Muirhead, 
1987, Fusco et al., 1989, Fusco and Pittella, 1991).